Ranzal & Associates Weblog SAP’s Application Software Business Worth More Than Oracle's SAP ( SAP ) and Oracle ( ORCL ) are the two biggest players in the enterprise application software market. SAP mainly sells application software solutions, while Oracle's business is much more diversified, including database software and middleware along with customer-facing applications. Having acquired Sun Microsystems last year, Oracle is now in the hardware business as well, selling servers and storage products loaded with its own software. We estimate that SAP's applications software business is worth about $62 billion, versus $45 billion for Oracle's application software business. Application software primer SAP and Oracle compete in several business software application segments, including enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management ( CRM ), business intelligence (BI) and supply chain management (SCM). ERP software is used to integrate an organization's data and processes into single system. Oracle vs. SAP leads Oracle in terms of market share
Oracle IP suit against Google tied to Boston-area startup Last month, Oracle Corp. (Nasdaq: ORCL) sued Google Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG), complaining the Mountain View, Calif., search giant stole its technology for use in Android — the mobile phone operating system that Google is using to give Apple Inc.’s (Nasdaq: AAPL) iPhone a run for the money. As far as technology intellectual property lawsuits go, the stakes could hardly be higher. This week, a couple of mobile industry analysts at Bernstein Research said Android phones, now selling at a rate of 200,000 a day, could outnumber iPhones by the end of 2011, giving Google the dominant position in the fast-growing market for mobile apps. Woven in and out of the back story behind this three-way power struggle is SavaJe Technologies, a little Boston-area startup that amassed more than $70 million from a long list of venture-capital and strategic investors before flaming out and selling to Sun Microsystems in 2007.
Oracle Growth Plans Worry Rivals and Customers But Oracle’s annual takeover of San Francisco pales against its larger ambitions — to supply just about all the technology, software and hardware, that businesses might need. This sweeping agenda has rattled the nerves of customers, who fear that Oracle has its own best interests, not theirs, at heart. The worry is that instead of saving money, customers will end up paying more over the long term, and that Oracle, already known for its aggressive tactics, will use its strong position in software to gain even more leverage over a larger array of products. Companies have long used Oracle’s software to keep track of their most prized information. For Oracle, this resulted in sales of $26.8 billion last year and hints of an annual revenue goal of $100 billion. This year, it bought Sun Microsystems, a hardware maker, signaling its intention to dominate the data centers of businesses by controlling more of their technology purchases. But customers are objecting to Oracle’s moves. Ms.
Save $ 195: SAP BI Software for Free SAP Crystal Presentation Design – formerly known as SAP Xcelsius Present – is business intelligence software from the SAP BusinessObjects portfolio. With it, you can generate well-founded forecasts and interactive charts, presentations, graphics, and dashboards from simple spreadsheets. The software does not draw data from SAP systems in real time; SAP Crystal Dashboard Design offers this function, but comes at a price. The free, slimmed-down SAP Crystal Presentation Design does, however, enable you to visualize data from Microsoft Excel in an attractive graphical format. In doing so, the software exports the raw data as Flash (.swf) files for use in Adobe PDF and Microsoft Office (PowerPoint, for example). Besides generating interactive charts and graphs, SAP Crystal Presentation Design can also construct what-if scenarios based on an existing basis of data. Read On: System Requirements and Download
Community Network Blogs To be perfectly honest, this Reportapalooza challenge scared me the most. While I have more Crystal Reports solutions under my belt than I care to count, I had never actually used SAP Crystal Presentation Design (formerly Xcelsius). In fact, other than some hands-on tutorials over the last few weeks, this would be my first ever dashboard. It turns out that while development time was limited, the process was surprisingly easy. Of course, having a background in Excel was pretty critical to the successful completion of the project. Before I go any further, if you want to see the dashboard, please visit the Reportapalooza Dashboards by Request page: The original concept called for a dashboard that celebrated Bobby Cox’s career managing the Atlanta Braves. Now I had an idea of what I wanted the dashboard to do. So far, you might be saying to yourself, this is all Excel and has nothing to do with SAP Crystal Presentation Design but you would be wrong. David Deitch
RoamBI – Beautiful Mobile BI for the iPad | CloudAve RoamBI for iPhone, which I reviewed last year, has long been the best-looking mobile BI application available in the market. Now the folks at RoamBI have been one of the very first vendors worldwide to come out with an updated application for the iPad, and they provided me with one in order to test their brand-new version. First Impressions It’s as beautiful as its predecessor, and the new document formats available use the new expanded workspace to pack in a lot more analytic ability. There is a series of videos available on the RoamBI web site that illustrate the different document types available. View SAP Carbon Disclosure Data SAP and RoamBI have partnered to provide easy access to information from SAP and the Carbon Disclosure Project. It shows SAP’s carbon footprint for various categories (corporate cars, electricity for facilities, business flights, etc.), broken down by region (EMEA has to do the most work!) Pricing Conclusion Summary: Pros Cons
Friend Network Optimizer App Explodes Overnight Over the past 24 hours a new application, sponsored by SAP, has been spreading like wildfire: Friend Network Optimizer. The application tells users how active they are on Facebook in comparison to a segment of their social graph. It’s an interesting tool and it also is spreading by automatically posting feed stories the moment a user installs the application. The technique has effectively helped the application grow to tens of thousands of users overnight. As soon as users go to install the application, they see the following permissions dialogue: As you notice, the application requests to be able to post wall posts at any point. After installing the application, users have the following story posted to their profile: So far I’ve seen at least 5 friends in the past 24 hours have this story show up on their profile. Ultimately this application reveals some interesting statistics, as pictured below.
BusinessObjects Takes On Android Since early 2010, users have been able to analyze business data on their iPhones with the SAP BusinessObjects Explorer app. Those with smartphones based on Google’s Android operating system can now do the same with firmware 2.2 (codename: “Froyo”), which supports Adobe Flash content. The supported version of Adobe Flash is the same on which the applications SAP BusinessObjects Dashboard Design (formerly known as Xcelsius) and SAP BusinessObjects Explorer rely. Right now, Android’s firmware 2.2 is only available for Google’s own cell phone, Nexus One. SAP BusinessObjects Explorer in the Android Browser (graphic: Timo Elliott) Those looking to release Xcelsius dashboards for Android devices should bear a number of factors in mind. On his business intelligence blog, SAP BusinessObjects expert Timo Elliott has made a test dashboard available for download.
Facebook meets SAP « Page 2 Dashboard-Design "Friend Network Optimizer" (Screenshot: grasundsterne) Straightforward analysis of Facebook profile So, what does the Friend Network Optimizer actually do with your data? First, the app creates a list of your friends. Up to 50 of them can be chosen for an analysis or can be selected at random. Furthermore, your activities are divided into four categories: social activity, status updates, wall posts, and photo uploads. From occasional user to Facebook star – using fictitious scenarios But the app can do more than that. You can change your network reach by removing existing friends or adding pretend “new friends” – even if you don’t actually know them. Next page: Why install the app? Leaderboard for most active Users (Screenshot: grasundsterne)